Along Route 74: Numbers can rule our lives sometimes

Tuesday

Sep 10, 2013 at 12:01 AMSep 16, 2013 at 8:54 AM

Alan Ford

Thereís a TV commercial at present that brings a chuckle.

In it a customer allows another patron to pass him in line at the register. All of a sudden confetti comes down from the ceiling, a band begins playing and the individual who moved up is celebrated and gets prizes for being the 100,000th (or some such number) shopper to come through there.

I get a kick out of it because it shows how superficial numbers can affect our lives.

One of those has to do with age. Itís something I donít think much about until a birthday rolls around. Iím to the point Iím just glad Iím still around (at 57) to count.

Another number this week came into play as my Twitter followers drew close to the 1,000 mark. Social Media data means a lot to some folks but for me it just says there are a lot of high school football, Gardner-Webb and American Legion fans out there desperate for a score.

Another I thought a lot about recently was one I was waiting to arrive for a good while Ö 200,000. Thatís because as the summer breezed by, the mileage total on my 2000 Grand Am grew ever closer to it.

Finally, I was in the parking lot at Family Dollar/Veronaís/Webb Peach stand when that number flipped over recently.

It was a little bit of a letdown not to have some interesting tale to share about being on a trip to the beach or a ballgame when it happened. There were no marching bands or streamers flying. It was just me and a nearly empty parking lot.

But there were a few other thoughts that came -- especially given the abuse that Pontiac has taken.

I thought of a big limb smashing through the windshield a few years back during a storm, the time someone bashed in my fender at a basketball game in Winston Salem, and another instance when my college roommateís wife backed out of her garage on a Sunday morning to go to early church and forgot they had a visitorís vehicle in the yard. She did Dale Earnhardt proud with that contact.

On a sentimental note, I thought of a couple folks no longer with us who had ridden in my car. And with it was the realization thatís the last car I would own that my mother got to ride in with me.

Numbers, whether artificial in nature or something that really matters (speed limits, ATM codes, income tax, Duke-Carolina basketball score, etc.) often have a hold on our lives. Itís important not to be a prisoner to them. Sometimes that easier said than done.